Tips on how to create the right mindset for business growth.

1. By Koos Herselman – Stress and Trauma Consultant

2. “The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered
planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is
obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
~Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time~
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche~
“The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.”
~Oscar Wilde~

3. •
Perspective is the way you see things and depends very much on your past experiences
and mental conditioning by others.
•
A perspective can either free you to be successful, or can restrict you to frustratingly poor
results.
•
A healthy perspective will allow you to make productive decisions that, if acted on, will
give you results that leave you feeling fabulous.
•
An unhealthy perspective may prevent you from acting on productive
decisions, guaranteeing a result that leaves you feeling frustrated.

4. •
Times are hard so sales will be down.
•
The only sure thing in life is death and taxes.
•
People can’t be trusted.
•
The taxman takes everything.
•
If I lose my business I might as well die.
•
Money is evil.
•
Customers can be a real irritation.
•
Customers are never satisfied.
•
I don’t know if I can pull this off.
•
Partners always rip you off.

5. •
“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere” - The New York Times,
January 13, 1920. The Times offered a retraction on July 17, 1969, as Apollo 11 was on
its way to the moon.
•
“Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it.” - C. P.
Scott, BBC History of television.
•
“That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by
the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been
introduced.” - Scientific American, January 2, 1909.
•
“There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” - Steve
Ballmer, USA Today, April 30, 2007.
•
“The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war
ridiculous.” - Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of radio, Technical World Magazine, October,
1912, page 145.

6. There is some very important reasons why you having a negative perspective will affect your
business negatively:
1. Your perspective affects your decisions and behaviour dramatically. If you have a negative
perspective about something, you will choose not to pay attention to it and so may miss
out on fantastic opportunities.
2. People will pick up on your negative perspective and this will affect how they interact with
you. You may become known as a naysayer, people may choose to avoid you and clients
may take their business elsewhere.
3. You will start hating yourself for always being negative, and this will come out as anger
directed at others. This could cause valuable staff to leave you.

7. •
Firstly, acknowledge that you know very little of everything there is to know.
•
Now realise that, the reason something isn’t going right, is because you haven’t yet learnt
how to make it go right. This is an extremely powerful realization because with it must
come the acknowledgement that you can get anything right – if you just learn how to get it
right.
•
Force yourself not to turn away any ideas or opinions. If faced with something presented
by someone, and you feel it may be garbage, respond to it by saying, “I don’t know about
that. You will need to bring me more information.” or, “That is an interesting opinion. I
don’t have much information available to me so I will reserve my judgment on that.”
•
Finally, if you are confronted by something in your business that gives you a sinking
feeling in the pit of your stomach, or triggers irritation or anger in you, then ask, and try
and answer this question for yourself: “What is right about this that I am not seeing?”

8. A Chinese friend of mine once said to me, whilst
discussing the reasons for business failures: “A fish
always rots from the head down”. Now I don’t know if
this is biologically correct, and I don’t know where the
saying originated, but I do believe it to be a good
analogy for business.
If your business isn’t doing well, carefully and honestly
check out your perspective about everything in and
around your business. If you determine that your poop
from your past has left you with a negative perspective
about things that you should have a positive perspective
about, do something about that.